Honu
by Sotalpfs
Summary: Mike gets some big wave action.


"No can, man."

"Mike, you _got_ this."

"I dunno, dude. That's, like, a thirty-foot face right there."

They both stop to watch a surfer frantically ditch his board midair, limbs pinwheeling like crazy. It's a long way down before he finally crashes into the boiling surf.

"…Yeah."

Mike keeps nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other: right, left, right, left.

Raph sympathizes, but he also knows they're not going to get another chance like this again. Renet can only hold the inter-dimensional time warp thingy open for so long, so he rustles up the most convincing grin he can muster and claps Mike encouragingly on the shell. "C'mon, you're totally ready for this." He points to their beleaguered surfer who finally pops up near the rocky shoreline, looking battered and dazed. "See? He's fine. Totally safe."

Mike gives his brother a skeptical look.

"Actually," Don speaks up from his perch on the lava rock beside them. "This is the number one surf break for head and neck injuries in the world. Not to mention the fatalities, like that one guy –"

"Not helping, Don," Raph cuts him off.

"All I'm saying is it's an extremely shallow reef out there. We're talking barely a foot below the surface. It's treacherous, even for the most advanced surfer to navigate."

"Don – "

But Donny's on a roll now and he plows forward, oblivious to the daggered look Raph's giving him and Mike's increasingly horrified expression. "We're talking a 40 mile-per-hour freight train slamming you into boulders the size of houses," he says, spreading his arms wide to illustrate. "Not even our shells can protect us if we get hit just right. And by my calculation, it's averaging eight waves per set, with only about three minutes between sets." He nods to himself significantly. "That's not a lot of breathing room, Mikey. If you get caught inside one of those, you'll expend all your energy just trying to get back out."

"Thank you, encyclopedia Donatellica," Raph says.

" _All_ I'm saying is, maybe this isn't such a good idea."

"Geez, you sound like Leo."

"Speaking of Leo," Don looks over his shoulder, half-expecting their brother to jump out from behind a banyan tree, "how'd you get this past him?"

Mike and Raph exchange an uncomfortable look. Don immediately understands this to mean that Leo was conveniently left out of the equation. "Never mind," he sighs. "Forget I asked."

Raph slings an arm over Mike's shoulders. "C'mon, Mikey, would I ever tell you to do something dangerous?" The look he gets from both of them shuts him up real quick.

Mike scans the ocean surface. "Lots of heads out there."

Which also means that, any minute now, a phalanx of tourists are going to come pouring out of their tropical-themed tour buses, long-lensed cameras at the ready.

"Oh man, they're totally gonna _see_ me."

"It's still dark, Mike," Don points out, needlessly. Then softer, "But we've only got about 30 minutes before dawn."

" _When_ are we, anyway?" grumbles Raph.

Don flicks a thumb over his shoulder. "By the look of the cars in that parking lot, 90s, is my guess."

"That's _it_?!" Raph throws up his arms. "Why can't Renet send us to a when with no humans? Is that too much to ask?"

"It's not an exact science, Raph."

"Maybe she's got a thing for flat tops and mood rings," says Mike.

"That's…probably it," Don nods reflectively.

Raph groans. "Mikey, if you're gonna do it…"

"I dunno," Mike sighs. But he's looking wistfully out at sea. He's been dreaming of this day since pretty much forever.

Raph's not one for philosophical introspection. That's more Leo's thing. But he digs deep on this one because he knows his little brother is gonna wuss out any minute now if he doesn't say something. "Just, you know, _be_ the wave."

"Dude, that's so lame."

"Whatever, just _go_ already," Raph says with a hint of real irritation.

"Yeah, okay, okay, I got this." Mike starts jogging in place, pumping himself up. Yup, he's totally got it. He switches to jumping up and down. No problemo. Just a couple more reps first.

"Are you going or not?"

"I'm going!"

He hefts the pintail board under his arm with a bravado he doesn't feel and starts the long, slow trek to the shoreline.

"Watch out for sharks," Don shouts from behind.

Mike rolls his eyes and keeps walking, each step bringing him closer to the stupidest thing he's done in…well, not that long, if he's being honest with himself. At least a week, anyway.

The board's starting to feel like a hundred pound weight under his arm. He trudges forward. Just beyond the water's edge, he bends down and adjusts his ankle strap for the umpteenth time. He's being casual about it so his brothers don't think he's trying to buy time, which he is, because clearly this is a Bad Idea. And if Leo were here, he'd do the sensible thing and tell Raph to cut the crap out because this is a Bad Idea, and then they'd all go home and never talk about any of this ever again.

"Next set's coming up!" Raph calls out.

Mike raises his arm in a half-salute and stands back up.

A wave rushes up to greet him, wetting his toes. At least the water's warm. It'll be like dying in a bathtub. With sharks. Mike takes a fluttering breath and wades in. Soon the water's up to his shins, then his waist. His pulse is doing a strange jig in his throat, but he grabs the rails and rolls onto the board anyway.

Using long, deep sweeps of his arms, he starts paddling toward the lineup. He singsongs the surfer mantra to calm his rattling nerves: "Eyes forward. Knees relaxed. Feet parallel. Eyes forward. Knees—"

A large wave, the first of the set, rolls towards him. He cranes his neck up, watching its progress, timing it. The water's moving fast and the foamy cylinder soon towers above him, filling his vision. Mike clutches his board. Just as the crest is about to hit him, he sucks in a lungful of air, pushes down on his board, and duck-dives beneath the surface. The wave passes overhead in a slurry of bubbles. It pulls at his ankle leash, trying to drag him off his board, but he presses forward, using his arms to pull him back up to the surface. Mike spits out a mouthful of ocean and grins. That wasn't so bad.

Feeling buoyed by the small victory, he maneuvers his board the last couple of yards to the lineup, careful to come up behind the surfers and bodyboarders jockeying for position. No one pays him any mind, so he climbs up on his board to wait his turn. Feet dangling in the water, he peers into the murky depths of the early tide and sees the jagged coral reef just beneath his toes. And what's that shadowy and suspiciously shark-like figure over there? He's half a breath away from noping outa there when the shadow shifts again and reveals itself to be nothing more than a group of harmless parrotfish cruising around.

He lets out a nervous chuckle and shakes his head. "Keep your shell on, Mikester."

He looks back at the beach. Squinting, he can just make out the long slab of sand and, further back, the skeletal outlines of the large estate houses. His brothers are nowhere to be seen in the gloomy half-light of dawn, but he knows they're out there somewhere.

He turns his attention back to the vague, shifting shadows of the other surfers as they battle the A-frame waves. He soon spies a likely candidate of his own on the horizon—a smooth, bounding main. He checks to see if anyone else is claiming dibs, sees that no one has, then flops prone on his board and swims determinedly into the takeoff zone. "Eyes forward. Knees relaxed. Feet parallel," he chants.

He casts a quick glance over his shoulder. What was once a little hill has now blossomed into an impossible mountain. Gathering himself, he points the nose of his board towards shore and starts paddling quickly, trying to time its arrival. The wave's bearing down on him racecar fast, though, and Mike struggles to keep pace. He pushes harder, digging deep for all he's worth. And then he feels it, the water suddenly shifting hard beneath him, the tail of his board beginning to rise.

This is it!

He springs up, plants his feet (parallel!), and instantly the strong surge lifts his board up. He bends his knees, waiting for the right moment. Higher and higher he goes. He's 50 feet up. No, 100! The surfers below him are just tiny pinpricks in the rippling surge. And still higher he rises. "Eyes parallel, knees forward, feet relaxed, eyesparallelfeetforward!"

Finally the wave reaches its zenith and can go no further. For a frozen moment, Mike balances on its precipice, his board teetering on the stormy edge. He chances a look down and what he sees is daunting: a drop so steep he can't even see the bottom. He has a brief second to think that maybe he should've sat this one out, then gravity kicks in and suddenly there's no going back.

"Ride or die," he says through clinched teeth.

He shifts his weight forward, which instantly sends him sliding—falling!—down the endless green-blue wall. Like a wet and especially terrifying rollercoaster, the heart-stopping drop goes on forever. Down and down he goes. The wave's frothing peak is miles above him, the nearly vertical cliff sweeping him towards the rocky shore. He charges down its face, his board galloping beneath his feet like a bucking bronco.

The churning base rushes up to him, ready to smash him into a multitude of broken bones. He crouches low and braces for the shock. He lands hard a second later, the board slamming against his feet. He nearly loses it on impact, but he remembers to rotate his hips and just barely manages to avoid wiping out in the frothy pit.

He made the drop! Mike crows in delight.

But the ride's not over yet. He reins the board in and leans left, sliding into a smooth bottom turn that takes him parallel to the shore. The exhilarating rush of water is a loud percussion against his ears. He shifts his weight again, feeling his way through the turn, and now the thick curl of water is purling over his head. He's in the tube! Mike fist pumps the air as he gleefully barrels through the hollow core at breakneck speed. His board leaps and bounces under him as if to share his joy.

He did it - he's surfing the ultimate wave!

"Cowabungaaaaaaa!"

And then it's bubbles and whitewater everywhere. In the tumult, the ankle leash breaks and suddenly he's in the world's largest washing machine. The crush of water pounds him, twisting and turning him until he doesn't know which way is up. Stinging salt water comes rushing up into his nose and ears. He jerks his body around, fighting against the pummeling surf, grabbing for purchase. He blindly feels around and finds rock. He grasps it like a lifeline, ignoring the sharp edges that cut into his skin. He fights hard against the current, grabbing handfuls of sand now to keep from being dragged back out to sea. Inch by painful inch, he pulls himself up out of the surf and slowly crawls onto the beach, spitting and sputtering, and completely rung out. He manages a few more feet before collapsing spread-eagle on his shell.

Whew, that was a close one. He takes a mental inventory and finds all limbs present and accounted for. His hands are another matter, all scraped and raw, but he's still too hopped up on adrenaline to pay much notice. Blinking salt water out of his eyes, he sits up on his elbows and looks around, trying to get his bearings. The first rays of sunshine have crested behind him, throwing corridors of orange light across the beach. Mike shields his eyes and turns his head this way and that. Nothing looks familiar to him under the brightening sky, and it slowly dawns on him that he's washed up in a deserted area nearly a mile from where he started. His board nowhere to be found. Damn.

But he barely has time to register the loss before he's swept up into a crushing bear hug by Raph and excited whoops and high-threes from both his brothers. Everyone's talking over everyone else and nobody can hear a word anyone is saying. Mike can't stop grinning, and he's dripping salty wet all over Raph who's trying to maintain balance for them both in the loose sand, but his brother's too caught up in Don's dramatic reenactment of Mike's death-defying ride to care.

And, oh…wait –

Mike pulls up short.

"L-Leo?"

How'd he…?

Everyone goes silent, except for Raph who's grumbling something obscene under his breath about Renet and a certain part of Leo's anatomy, but Mike doesn't catch the details.

Before he can even open his mouth to plead innocence, Leo hands him his missing board. "Thought you might want this," he says, his cheeks dimpling in a smile.

Mike's eyes go wide. "You found it!" He grabs the pintail with one arm and hugs his brother with the other. "Did you see me? Did you see me ride? You're not mad at me are you?"

Leo laughs. "Yes. Yes. And no, though I should be. You did good out there, Mikey." This makes Mike indescribably happy and he squeezes his brother once more before releasing him.

"So, how'd you know where to find us?" And then he immediately answers his own question, "Renet told you, didn't she."

Leo smiles a secret he wouldn't tell. "Let's get home, guys" he says, then points at Mike's injured hands, "and get that taken care of."

Mike shrugs and starts to tell him it's nothing, really, just some scratches, but a familiar pulsating white orb starts to envelop the four of them, and he knows this when, this tiny moment of freedom, is nearly over. Blinded by the over-bright light, he can still hear the crashing water in the middle distance, beckoning him.

A rueful smile plays across his lips. "Cowabunga," he whispers.

And then there's only the pulling light, his brothers' distant laughter, and home.


End file.
